It’s a nearly perfect day that is bookended by watching both the sunrise and sunset. B’s family owns a house on Lake Erie and we invited a group of friends up to the Bay House for a weekend of grilling, swimming, and highly competitive croquet*. Since Plevs and I are both training for a fall marathon** we planned a 14 miler out to the Marblehead lighthouse and back for Saturday morning. There were several more runners in our group, and we assembled a sort of relay, with some running the 7 miles out, others driving to meet us at the lighthouse and tagging out other runners to join us on the way back. We were up at dawn and watched the sunrise over Lake Erie as we ran east.

The rest of the day was a long stretch of grilling, swimming, lawn bowling, juggling, croquet, beanbag toss, playing with the babies and dogs, cooking, visiting the model train museum, and napping. Vacationing like 30-somethings, basically. Sunset found us with margaritas in hand, preparing to set off fireworks off the end of the pier, and later watch the Perseid meteor shower and sit around a campfire. Such a simple, beautiful weekend. I am grateful to have such friends, such community. I know I can be a snob about many things in the Outside-Of-Chicago-Midwest (iceburg lettuce, things suspended in Jello and called “salad”, flat vowels, flat landscapes, to name a few), but I will swear that you will never meet nicer people than in the Midwest. Also, my friends are sophisticated Chicago city folk. So we have the best of both worlds. When I’m in Chicago, I miss California. In California, I miss Chicago. But I think we’ve found our homebase, and it is, surprisinly, amongst the flat vowels and iceburg lettuce.

*For all the (valid) complaining that B and my sisters-in-law do about the Gadda family car game, Zip, I am pleased to know that B’s family is at least as obnoxious competitive about their croquet games as we are about Zip.

** him Chicago, me Portland, since my dear friends Anne and Joe decided to get married on the day of the Chicago marathon, bye-bye $175 non-refundable race entry, sigh.